Caris Life Sciences Announces Planned Expansion of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) Capabilities

IRVING, Texas, May 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Caris Life Sciences™, a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine, today announced it intends to expand its Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) capabilities to include whole exome and transcriptome sequencing.  The offering will provide physicians with an in-depth report focusing on the 452 well-documented somatic alterations present across all cancer types.

Once launched, this expanded mutational analysis will be available for order as a standalone panel or in combination with other molecular tests. This 450-plus gene profile will include all relevant genomic alterations, including translocations, rearrangements, copy number alterations, base substitutions, insertions and deletions. The expanded profile utilizes the COSMIC database to identify and include every gene that has been shown to contain alterations in any type of cancer. As new genes important to the understanding of cancer are identified, they can quickly be included in the report prepared for physicians, ensuring that patients receive the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available.  Increasing the breadth of genes profiled will provide the next level of biomarker analysis, and will complement the company's flagship molecular profiling offering, which already equips oncologists with the most clinically actionable biomarker data and drug correlations available today.

"Our molecular profiling service, Caris Molecular Intelligence™, utilizes the most relevant technologies to interrogate proteins, RNA and DNA," said David D. Halbert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Caris Life Sciences. "We've found that many of our customers were curious to see more genetic mutations, so as the leading service provider in the molecular profiling space, we wanted to be responsive and further develop our DNA and RNA mutational analysis capabilities."

Based on a very sophisticated bioinformatic algorithm, Caris can combine the more than 30,000 data points in its Caris Registry warehouse with the results generated from expanded DNA mutational analysis. This unique ability will enable richer, more meaningful data outputs for future research use.

About Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences is a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine. This specialty oncology reference laboratory offers more than 70 clinically relevant molecular profiling tests, including its comprehensive Caris' Molecular Intelligence™ profile. Caris Molecular Intelligence correlates molecular data generated from a patient's tumor with biomarker/drug associations derived from the world's leading clinical cancer literature. With nearly 50,000 patients profiled, this service uses the most advanced and clinically-relevant technologies to provide physicians with information to aid in the selection of personalized cancer treatments more likely to work for each patient. Caris is also developing a series of blood tests based on the company's proprietary Carisome® platform — a blood-based testing technology for diagnosis, prognosis, and theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Headquartered in the Dallas metroplex, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout the United States, Europe, and other international markets. To learn more, please visit www.carislifesciences.com.

SOURCE Caris Life Sciences